History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps

HoP 404 - Robert Goulding on Peter Ramus

A chat with Ramus expert Robert Goulding on the role of mathematics in Ramist philosophy.

HoP 403 - Make It Simple - Peter Ramus

Peter Ramus scandalizes his critics, and thrills his students and admirers, by proposing a new and simpler approach to philosophy.

HoP 401 - Word Perfect - Logic and Language in Renaissance France

Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples and Julius Caesar Scaliger fuse Aristotelianism with humanism to address problems in logic and literary aesthetics.

HoP 395 - Music of the Spheres - Johannes Kepler

Johannes Kepler fuses Platonist philosophy with a modified version of Copernicus’ astronomy.

HoP 394 - Best of Both Worlds - Tycho Brahe

Responses to Copernicus in the 16th century, culminating with the master of astral observation Tycho Brahe.

HoP 393 - The World Doesn’t Revolve Around You - Copernicus

How revolutionary was the Copernican Revolution?

HoP 383 - Slowly But Surely - Huldrych Zwingli

The Swiss theologian Zwingli launches the Reformation in Switzerland, but clashes with Luther and more radical Protestants.

HoP 375 - Paul Richard Blum on Nicholas of Cusa

Learned ignorance, coincidence of opposites and religious peace: Paul Richard Blum discusses the central ideas of Nicholas Cusanus.

HoP 374 - Opposites Attract - Nicholas of Cusa

The radical negative theology of Nicholas of Cusa, and his hope of establishing peace between the religions of the world.

HoP 369 - The Harder They Fall - Galileo and the Renaissance

Did Galileo’s scientific discoveries grow out of the culture of the Italian Renaissance?

HoP 363 - Man of Discoveries - Girolamo Cardano

The polymath Girolamo Cardano explores medicine, mathematics, philosophy of mind, and the interpretation of dreams.

HoP 361 - The Measure of All Things - Renaissance Mathematics and Art

The humanist study of Pythagoras, Archimides and other ancient mathematicians goes hand in hand with the use of mathematics in painting and architecture.

HoP 322 - Do the Math - Science in the Palaiologan Renaissance

Mathematics and the sciences in Byzantium, focusing on scholars of the Palaiologan period like Blemmydes and Metochites.

HoP 298 - Renaissance Men - Ramon Llull and Petrarch

The Renaissance ideals of humanism and universal science flourish already in the medieval period, in the works of Petrarch and Ramon Llull.

HoP 279 - Quadrivial Pursuits - the Oxford Calculators

Bradwardine and other thinkers based at Oxford make breakthroughs in physics by applying mathematics to motion.